10 Marriage and Family
Learning Objectives
10.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?
- Define “the family”.
- Describe micro, meso, and macro approaches to the family.
- Outline the sociological approach to the dynamics of attraction and love.
- Analyze changes in marriage and family patterns.
- Understand the effect of the family life cycle on the quality of family experience.
10.2. Variations in Family Life
- Recognize variations in family life.
- Describe the different forms of the family including the nuclear family, single-parent families, cohabitation, same-sex couples, and unmarried individuals.
- Discuss the functionalist, critical, and symbolic interactionist perspectives on the modern family.
10.3. Challenges Families Face
- Understand the social and interpersonal impact of divorce.
- Describe the problems of family abuse and discuss whether corporal punishment is a form of abuse.
Introduction to Marriage and Family
Christina and James met in college and dated for more than five years. For the past two years, they have been living together in a condo they purchased jointly. While Christina and James were confident in their decision to enter into a commitment (such as a 20-year mortgage), they are unsure if they want to enter marriage. The couple had many discussions and decided that marriage just did not seem necessary. Was it not only a piece of paper? Didn’t half of all marriages end in divorce?
Neither Christina nor James had seen much success with marriage while growing up. Christina was raised by a single mother. Her parents never married, and her father had little contact with the family. Christina and her mother lived with her maternal grandmother, who often served as a surrogate parent. James grew up in a two-parent household until age seven, when his parents divorced. He lived with his mother for a few years, and then later with his mother and her boyfriend. James remained close with his father who remarried and had a baby with his new wife.
Christina and James are now thinking about having children, and the subject of marriage has resurfaced. Christina likes the idea of children growing up in a traditional family. James is concerned about possible marital problems down the road and negative consequences for the children. When they shared these concerns with their parents, James’s mom thought the couple should get married. Despite having been divorced and having a live-in boyfriend of 15 years, she believes that children are better off when their parents are married. Christina’s mom believes that the couple should do whatever they want but adds that it would “be nice” if they wed. Christina and James’s friends told them, married or not married, they would still be a family.
Christina and James are like many young couples today, particularly those in urban areas (Useem, 2007). Statistics Canada (2012) reports that the number of unmarried, common-law couples grew by 35% between 2001 and 2011, for a total of 16.7% of all Canadian